A great benefit of social networking websites is their ability to connect people to one another and thus establish and nurture important relationships, including both business and personal relationships. Unfortunately, however, social networking websites have yet to be effectively leveraged to connect people who do not know each other, based on observed characteristics of those people.
Dating websites, such as eHarmony® and Match.com®, suggest romantic matches based on information that individuals provide about themselves for the purpose of matching. This type of matching is inherently flawed because it depends on individuals correctly describing how others perceive them. Furthermore, many users of these dating websites already have an idea of the type of person they would like to date. Thus, either consciously or subconsciously, a user may provide inaccurate information, so as to meet that certain type of person regardless of whether that type is truly compatible with the user.
A social networking website, Facebook®, matches people based on mutual contacts. For example, if two people have multiple mutual contacts, Facebook may suggest that the two people connect with each other. This system of people-matching is useful for locating people who already know each other but have not yet connected on Facebook. The Facebook matching system, however, is not particularly useful for matching people who do not yet know each other, as two such people likely have no mutual contacts.
The above systems are unable to effectively suggest matches between strangers based on verified activities or behaviors of the strangers. Any matching that occurs with the above systems is based on subjective and possibly inaccurate information, or is useful only for matching people who already know each other.